


the transformation of something

by Swamp_Cat



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Other, Self-Harm, Violence, this is kind of sad and weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2018-09-21 10:47:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9545096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swamp_Cat/pseuds/Swamp_Cat
Summary: Last night the sky was explodingand i hope you got to see it happeni hope you witnessedjust one secondof that distant flameslicing through the darknessand recognized yourself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hye babes.... this ones got self harm and like. death  
> not super sad death! just freaky shit u kno

So, it's been awhile. Hi. I always knew I had a really terrible sense of time, but it seems like it's been eons. I don't believe in time anyway. The sun and moon watch us crawl so fast that we are ribbons across the earth, what does it matter if sometimes my 30 seconds feels like an insect's 30 seconds? Like years that drag across sandpaper, or cement, or hot desert sand. I think that everyone has left this place. I haven't seen... people. There were guards before. They had the same uniforms, dry and grey and unfriendly, they brought me food and stared. They stare more now.    
Bigger eyes, I think. They don't move anymore. Or maybe- maybe they shudder, it's cold, i don't know why it's not into my bones yet but i feel it on my skin. Cold.    
It feels peculiar. It feels good. It's never felt that good before.    
I'm supposed to be frightened- about eating, maybe. The glass of my box is seamless. I don't know how I'm breathing, either. Am I breathing? For some reason I am certain it's not relevant. I press my hand to the glass and the ones that stare shudder more. They are filled with horror, breaching the calm white space with black holes of wrongness. It's not them that's wrong, I know that, even though they are filled with hate. They are victims of hate. They are mirrors. You would get mad at me if I said that in front of you, wouldn't you? I know it's not funny but it's been so routine it makes me smile.    
Or, it was so routine. Reliable, like coffee in the mornings. Always there, helpful to remind you of your reality. Comforting. One day you are on your knees begging coffee to have kindness, because something inside your head tore and all the world’s bared themselves, screaming the great cost of cruelty.    
Like I could save you.    
  
The wide-eyed don't blink.    
  
-   
  
I've been singing, mostly because I tried screaming and hitting and nothing happened. I'm waiting to get thirsty. I sing songs from musicals, sad songs, I hum, I rap my knuckles on the wall for a beat. I have staring contests with the wide-eyed. I always get distracted and no one wins. I scratch rivulets into my arms, and those moments are lost to something blinding and ugly.    
I throw myself against the wall a couple times. I have big bruises on my hip and bicep. mostly, I sleep.    
  
-   
  
It's been three weeks since Enjolras has slept properly. Three weeks since the absence, the failure, since his right arm was ripped from his body and his  _ Grantaire _ ripped from his safety. (It was never safe, but it was  _ home) _ . Nobody knows if he is alive. (Enjolras knows. He can hear him when everything is so silent that the air rings, he hears him singing  _ on my own  _ three nights after while rehabilitating and he laughs until he cries.)    
"That's it," his voice is a rasp in the darkness.    
"You brilliant creature."   
  
And then there's morphine, which is a beast all of its own. The dreams are so vivid he wakes up paralyzed, feels the familiar weight of Grantaire’s head on his chest, knows it but knows the second his eyes are open that he is gone. And it aches like nothing that has ever been. There are oceans of grief, whirlpools, waves that knock the life out of him without a second glance. Everyone walks on tiptoe in circles around him, but he loves them and doesn't lie to them. They know and he knows absolutely nothing is okay. And that's... not settled yet, but being handled. If anything, it’s fuel for moving forward. Grantaire would hate it, and the idea makes him laugh. Every day he is viciously grateful to know the pain, and he stakes Grantaire’s last warning to himself like an effigy. Each hour is an exercise in desperate hindsight, but he won’t let bitterness blind him. He watches the stars and he sees it. He watches Joly and Bossuet, their grim mouths, and he realizes the violent rage and determination of kindness. The fire that burns Eponine, something so loyal and bright it appears to the eye as though centuries old. They dock at small villages and when he is allowed outside he spends his time watching, watching, watching. His eyes feel new and raw. There is so much he has not seen, and he has to shut his eyelids in long blinks in order to not overdo himself.    
  
Enjolras met grantaire in a club on the edge of the galaxy.     
The unbelievable phenomenon that it was, it didn't end there. He had worked there, as a dancer, and it was not a nice bar. Truthfully, enjolras didn't remember all of it, because he was smashed. What he did remember was engraved on his memory, and he knows it wouldn't be the same if he went back. Somehow that night, the lights, music, and chemical interference had all convalesced into one being, and out of the dark had sauntered Grantaire like an old god. Like revel, smoke, fruit wine. And he never left.


	2. do you guys like the princess and the frog 2009 movie soundtrack?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yeah

  
I always figured dying would be like when the air conditioner goes off in the middle of the night, but it's your heart. Something you weren’t aware of, something vital, gone like gunshot fast.  I lay on my back with just enough room for my feet to plant against the glass and my hair to tickle the opposite side. It’s been hours since I lost my voice, and I can see the stars like an ocean around me. Floating in space.  _ Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.  _ I love that song, so I hear it. I love the pictures of stars in textbooks, but not the paintings or the pretty ones. I like the ones surrounded by a wall of impenetrable text to remind you of the vastness and inexplicable nature of just, being.

I guess. 

I fell in love with you when you told me, no shit, you wanted to be a cowboy when you grew up. It was just there all of a sudden, because you were smiling like you were filled with sunflowers. There are smiles of yours that burn, and they are ecstatically beautiful, but they scare as well as enthrall me.. 

The lights went out. The wide eyed made noises when the light left, and I’m trying not to hear them anymore, but god. 

Put it on my list of things to forget, forget, forget. It’s pitch black now, and I know where everything in the room is. I can’t see any of it, but when I close my eyes, I can feel the ground and walls like an extension of my body. 

_  

  
_ When you were a kid you stayed wide awake, she had whispered. Stared with wide eyes at the sky like there was something you’d just gotta to say, something that hadn’t been said before. God, she had laughed. You would grab and tug my hands at three am, grubby little kid in my face whispering about the trees tonight. They were special tonight, you would say, every night.  _

 

They had fallen dead asleep seconds later, bodies tangled up like children made of knees and elbows again. Grantaire saw her in every shade of blue, he woke up drenched in sweat, images of her swimming across his eyes and her voice hot in his ear. In those fast days after, he it spent hitchhiking through the solar system, running in and out of wars like it was hopscotch or something. She haunted every breathing minute. Every day spent wiping down a steel table in a restaurant kitchen, every black night managing the pump in the gas station, every buzzing and crowded dockport. Stained blue. Her common whips of tongue became fused into his life, he’d repeat them and laugh and they’d run over and over themselves in his head until they were just grating sound.  Mannerisms, favorite colors, it was like they just became him. Like the sucking vacuum of guilt just took all his memories of her and made them into him, a twin eating the other in the womb before it had a chance. 

Probably just dramatics on his part, but. 

Sometimes he sees her in the mirror instead of him. 

 

_

 

Try hearing what happens now as though an empty building, with hollow corners, and hard white walls. Listen closely to the snap, and a crackle, and the song. 

_ My love must be a kind  _

_ of blind love.  _

 

They creep through the halls, all tender boot step. They have guns. He dances in the cage, sways and sunders. 

_ I can’t see anyone  _

_ but you _ . 

He loves this song. So silly, and fun- the thought of the blindness, like love could rob your eyes. It’s not true, but it’s okay. The harmony is so alluring in the darkness. The boy in the boots & breathing mask is crying, because he can hear it. The tint of the glass guarding his face hides it from the others, but they are all crying too. It is good, Grantaire thinks, good, because it pools from a well of sadness inside them. The well is always pressing against the skin. The Flamingos go quiet and Etta James starts swooning the soul, aching and soothing and slow. Grantaire giggles, twists a single braid between two fingers. The glass is cold on his shoulder blades as he leans back, bobbing his head up and down to a heart wrapped in clover. 

_ I found a dream _

_ that I could speak too.  _

The people with boots and guns are getting closer now. 

_ I found a thrill _

_ that I could press my cheek too.  _

They are confused and afraid. They thought that they would need the guns, thought that there would be pain here- the pain has all passed, he thinks. Long time ago. Nina simone, now, holds the air. The strike of their discord rings in his ears, just as they creep, so close to the door. 

it pulls long and blue from his eyes, and he shudders with the feeling as it passes through him. 

_ I got myself.  _

They’d better be listening to Nina, he thinks. She knows what to do here. 

 

The door is found. They are talking now, over Janis Joplin, which Grantaire  _ supposes _ he can excuse. 

 

_ Take another little piece of my heart baby _ \- the door blows open. The Wide Eyed  _ Shriek.  _

_ Come on- come on- come on- _

Grantaire presses his hands over his ears, squeezes his eyes shut, the glass is shattering everywhere and the lights burning holes through his head. 

_ Come on- come on- come on-  _

The people are shouting and Grantaire opens his eyes- there is no air in the room anymore- an oxygen mask is graced over his face. Terrible noise is pouring from the walls, but there's a face there- made of light- crying and choking and smiling- Grantaire lets his hands wander all across this body which holds a soul he  _ knows.  _ He breathes out, a long, slow  _ ah. _

Enjolras is lifting him from the ground, where his knees have become bloodied and sore. There is glass everywhere. They are all speaking, but the shrieks are so loud that none of it is coming together in Grantaire’s head. For a little bit, there is nothing but that. 

Enjolras is walking now, with Grantaire in his arms, his footfalls crisp and desperate. They are all walking ahead of him, or crowding around him, none touching Grantaire as much as they want to or should be. He mumbles something, and Enjolras stops walking. 

 

“Baby? Ooohh, stars, motherfucking- Are you okay? Baby?” he sounds short of breath, and like he’s been saying things similar to this for awhile. A little like he’s choking. Grantaire laughs weakly. He doesn’t like that they aren’t still leaving.

 

He whines a bit of a low tone. “Can we  _ go _ already?” 

There is a chorus of laughter in a diversity of locations on the hysterical spectrum. He hears  _ Bahorel.  _ The name escapes his lips as he thinks it, hoarse and reedy. His baby is by his side in seconds, and Grantaire’s arms reach to him from Enjolras’s chest, searching and pressing, physically incapable of anything but tenderness. Bahorel’s wet, deep, laugh sends tremors through his core. There are kisses pressing to his face, and it's  _ very _ wet. Everyone is crying. The crease of his mouth is sparkling light & inexorable sweetness. 


End file.
